Community Events

	Beth David Events
One Community, One Book: A Year of Learning in the South Bay January 10 & 17, 7:30-8:30 pmThe Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center, the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley, and South Bay Jewish congregations invite you to join in a remarkable experience: A community-wide, year-long reading of As A Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg. (This book is for sale at the front desk of the APJCC).APJCC Study Group Calendar: January 10 & 17 from 7:30-8:30 pm at the Levy Campus. Cost: Free to all. Pick up a flyer at a participating organization or visit http://www.svjcc.org/book/ for more info. Event organized by the APJCC Center for Jewish Life & Learning. Growing List of Participating Organizations: Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center Congregation Beth David Congregation Shir Hadash Congregation Sinai Temple Emanu-El Yavneh Day School Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley Hillel of Silicon Valley SJSU Jewish Studies Program	Conversations in Jewish Learning Israel Naturally Thursday, January 17, 7:30 pm Speaker: Michal Strutin, Author and Librarian It’s no accident that Israel has been the center of strife for so many millennia. It’s the connecting point for three continents. Location, location, location also makes Israel one of the most biologically diverse—and beautiful—spots on earth. Take a photographic tour around natural Israel, from the vast Negev Desert and its ruby-colored Eilat Mountains to the lush, stream-fed preserves of northern Galil. Travel and environmental writer Michal Strutin will also weave in how Torah and its commentaries taught concern for nature, and will touch on how modern-day Israel is working to honor those concerns. Book sales and signing will follow the lecture. Click here for more information
Community Bone Marrow Donor Drive Sunday, January 27, 11:00 am – 4:00 pmHillel of Silicon Valley, AEPi Silicon Valley Chapter, SVYAD, and CBDYAG invite you to take the first step in saving a life! Drop by the Levy Family Campus on January 27 between 11am and 4pm (14855 Oka Road, Los Gatos, 95032) to get entered in the worldwide Bone Marrow Registry made possible by the Gift of Life Foundation. Donors must be 18-60 years of age. One in 1,000 of the donors in Gift of Life’s registry are called to donate their marrow or blood stem cells each year. Gift of Life is an associate donor registry of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and a participating member of the worldwide registry Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide. The only way you will ever know if you can help save a life is by taking the first step to be tested! Drop-ins are welcome, but a heads up is appreciated to make sure we have enough testing materials on hand! Testing is simple, and involves a swab from the inside of the cheeks to collect a sample of DNA. The donor’s tissue type is then entered into the Registry and made available to patients worldwide in need of transplants. It will take about 20 minutes to go through the registration and testing process. We’ll even have a few short musical acts and board games to entertain you, and of course food and schmoozing! It may be as little as a few months—or as much as five or even ten years after being tested—before you receive that special call to help save a life. In fact, you may never be called as a suitably matched donor for a patient. The only way you will ever know if you can help save a life is by taking the first step to be tested! For more information, contact EencoderM(“cbdyag”,”gmail”,”com”) cbdyag@gmail.com .	Next Pajama Shabbat Friday, January 18, 6:00 pm Do you have a toddler? Have you had a long week? Then come and take a break by joining us for Pajama Shabbat! This mini Kabbalat Shabbat service is geared towards ages 0-5 and features songs, puppets, felt, story time, plus a kid-friendly Shabbat dinner. Come as you are with kids in PJ’s! No worries about getting dressed up – this will be a casual night for all! Cost: $6.00 per adult (kids eat free!) RSVPs are requested! Please respond by Wednesday, January 16 to the CBD office at 408.257.3333.
Friday, 1/11 12-1:30 PM   Mark Levy at APJCC   Come to the APJCC for a pre-Shabbat lunch and a musical performance by Mark Levy. Mark Levy has performed and taught on the east and west coasts for 25 years. He is a singer who specializes in older Judaic folk music in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Ladino. The fee is $5 for members and $6 for non-members. Please RSVP to Hope at (408) 357-7438.	February 7, 2008 Thursday 7:30 pm The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch Speaker: Sue Fishkoff, Journalist They stand on street corners and ask whether you’re Jewish. They light giant Chanukah menorahs, teach lunch-n-learn sessions on Wall Street, hold free Passover Seders in Nepal and Shanghai, and raise more than a billion dollars a year to fund it all. What motivates the Chabad shluchim, the 5,000 emissaries in more than 70 countries who devote their lives to encouraging Jews to live more observant lives? How has this hassidic sect become so influential? Above all, how have they managed to attract so many Reform and Conservative Jews? Sue Fishkoff spent a year and a half traveling across North America, living with Chabad shluchim from Alaska to Boca Raton. She will share some of her adventures, and the insights she gained into how Chabad is filling an emotional and spiritual niche among so many non-observant Jews, and what the rest of the Jewish world can learn from that. Book sales and signing will follow the lecture. Note: This lecture date is tentative and will be confirmed in December, 2007. About the Speaker: Sue Fishkoff is a reporter and editor for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, focusing on American Jewish identity. She is a former staff writer for the Jerusalem Post, including two years as the paper’s New York correspondent, and is a regular freelancer for national publications including Hadassah Magazine, Reform Judaism and Moment. The Rebbe’s Army (Schocken, 2003) is her first book. And no, she is not a Lubavitcher–although she did put up a mezzuzah for the first time after writing this book.
ALSJCC Community-Wide Mitzvah Day – A Day of Service Join a community-wide day of “tikkun olam” (“repair of the world”) as part of a national day of service to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This intergenerational event will feature a range of hands-on service projects geared towards kids, adults, families, and seniors. Participants will work in small groups on projects addressing issues of poverty, hunger, housing and homelessness, aging, the environment, and more. Come on your own or with your family and friends! Pre-registration is required and space is limited in each service project. For more information and to sign up, go to paloaltojcc.org/mitzvah or call Jane Rachel Schonbrun at (650) 852-3502.	March 13, 2008 Thursday 7:30 pm Yiddish Protest Songs, Russian Miners’ Songs and Children’s Rhymes: On Producing a Compact Disk with the Music of S. An-sky Speaker: Gabriella Safran, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University S. An-sky (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, 1863-1920) is known as the author of the play The Dybbuk, but he was also an editor, an organizer, a revolutionary, and an ethnomusicologist who studied the Jews of the Pale of Settlement. Stanford professor Gabriella Safran and musician Michael Alpert have recently produced a compact disk that combines wax cylinder recordings of Yiddish folk songs with new performances of the music that An-sky collected and wrote. Listen to the CD, learn about An-sky’s dynamic Russian-Jewish cultural world, and find out about the joys and frustrations of music producing. About the Speaker: Gabriella Safran is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Director of the Center of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University. She is the author of Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire (2000) and the co-editor with Steven Zipperstein of The Worlds of S. An-sky: A Russian-Jewish Intellectual at the Turn of the Century (2006). Currently she is writing a biography of An-sky.
Saturday 2/9 7 – 10 PM       Second Annual South Bay Community Night of Learning: The Spice of Eretz Yisrael: the People, Land and Soul: Twenty rabbis, educators and other presenters will discuss Biblical Israel, political issues facing Israel today, the arts of music and dance, and food for the Jewish soul, among other topics. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to participate in a program with a broad base of presenters and topics, strengthening a sense of Jewish community in the South Bay and enhancing Jewish knowledge and understanding in a diverse Jewish community. For more information please contact Rabbi Fenton at (408) 358-3636.	April 3, 2008 Thursday 7:30 pm The History of the Jews in San José Speaker: Stephen Kinsey, History Teacher and Lecturer From Colonial America through the 19th century, the formation of synagogues in the United States offered Jews an opportunity to maintain and expand their traditions with each other and the coming generations. The Jewish presence in Santa Clara Valley was no different. This evening we will explore the development of the San Jose Jewish community in the 19th century and its further growth into the 20th century. About the Speaker: Stephen Kinsey and his wife, Lynne, have been members of Congregation Beth David since 1978. Stephen is a middle school history teacher. As a Trustee of the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks at the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkeley, he lectures on and leads tours to Jewish Gold Rush cemeteries.
	April 30, 2008 Wednesday 7:30 pm Shanghai Experiences of a Jewish ‘Old China Hand’ Speaker: Rena Krasno, author and former Shanghai resident Rena’s lecture reflects life in multi-cultural Shanghai intimately seen by a Jewish girl born and raised in this amazing city of adventure and international politics where Sephardi, Russian Jews and later European refugees from Hitler rebuilt their lives. Book sales and signing will follow the lecture. About the Speaker: Rena Krasno was born in Shanghai, China, in 1923. She attended the French Municipal College where she earned her Certificat d’Etudes, Brevet Superieur, Baccalaureate (Philosophy Section). She later entered the Faculty of Medicine at the Jesuit Aurora University (now called “Shanghai School of Medicine #2”) where she studied for 3 years during World War II. She left Shanghai in April 1949. In her professional life, Krasno worked as simultaneous interpreter for international organizations (UNESCO, ILO, FAO, Olympic Committee, and others) in Europe and Asia. Her working languages are: English and French (active), Russian and German (passive). She also speaks Hebrew and Spanish. Krasno served as Honorary Chancellor of Austria in Seoul, Republic of Korea. In 1984, Rena Krasno collaborated with Orah Elgar to produce an exhibit at the Tel Aviv Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora entitled: “The Jews of Kaifeng—Chinese Jews on the Banks of the Yellow River.” This exhibit subsequently traveled to 17 cities in the United States. The author of seven books, she also has been interviewed for several video and film presentations about her experiences in Shanghai during World War II. Her most recent book, Cloud Weavers, published in 2003, was acclaimed by the Washington Post to be “a terrific collection of 23 smoothly told tales from the treasury of Chinese culture.” Two of her books Strangers Always – a Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai and Red Dragon and Blue Cap (about a Jewish boy and a Chinese boy in 12th century Kaifeng), have been translated into Chinese.
	February 3, 2008 Sunday 10:00 am – 12:30 pm Pariahs Among Ayatollahs: The Jew As Outcast in Shiite Iran Speaker: Ken Blady, MA, Jewish Writer, Educator, and Translator Iranian Jewry is the oldest documented community in the world, having resided in Persia/Iran continuously for almost three thousand years. Yet in no other country in the Diaspora have the Jews suffered from so many centuries of unrelenting oppression and mortifying legal restrictions. At the instigation of cruel despots and the extremely hostile and fanatical mujahaddin (Shiite clergy), thousands of Jews were slaughtered, while those who managed to survive existed in conditions of the most brutal penury and dehumanization. On numerous occasions Jewish communities escaped annihilation only by embracing Islam. At one time possibly numbering in the millions, the entire Jewish population of Persia was several times brought almost to the brink of extinction. In this lecture/Power Point presentation we will survey the story of the Jews of Persia from Queen Esther to the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his zealous acolyte, Mahmud Ahmadinejad. A segment of the lecture will be devoted to the fascinating community of Djedid al-Islam (crypto-Jews) of the holy Shiite city of Mashhad.

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